Vilém Flusser > Quotes

“Both those taking snaps and documentary photographers, however, have not understood 'information.' What they produce are camera memories, not information, and the better they do it, the more they prove the victory of the camera over the human being.”
― Vilém Flusser, Towards a Philosophy of Photography

“The task of a philosophy of photography is to reflect upon this possibility of freedom - and thus its significance - in a world dominated by apparatuses; to reflect upon the way in which, despite everything, it is possible for human beings to give significance to their lives in the face of the chance necessity of death. Such a philosophy is necessary because it is the only form of revolution left open to us.”
― Vilém Flusser, Towards a Philosophy of Photography

“Changing the question 'free from what?' into 'free for what?'; this change that occurs when freedom has been achieved has accompanied me on my migrations like a basso continuo. This is what we are like, those of us who are nomads, who come out of the collapse of a settled way of life.”
― Vilém Flusser

“Our thoughts, feelings, desires and actions are being robotized; 'life' is coming to mean feeding apparatuses and being fed by them. In short: Everything is becoming absurd. So where is there room for human freedom?”
― Vilém Flusser, Towards a Philosophy of Photography

“Images are mediations between the world and human beings. Human beings 'ex-ist', i.e. the world is not immediately accessible to them and therefore images are needed to make it comprehensible. However, as soon as this happens, images come between the world and human beings. They are supposed to be maps but they turn into screens: Instead of representing the world, they obscure it until human beings' lives finally become a function of the images they create. Human beings cease to decode the images and instead project them, still encoded, into the world 'out there', which meanwhile itself becomes like an image - a context of scenes, of states of things. This reversal of the function of the image can be called 'idolatry'; we can observe the process at work in the present day: The technical images currently all around us are in the process of magically restructuring our 'reality' and turning it into a 'global image scenario'. Essentially this is a question of 'amnesia'. Human beings forget they created the images in order to orientate themselves in the world. Since they are no longer able to decode them, their lives become a function of their own images: Imagination has turned into hallucination.”
― Vilém Flusser, Towards a Philosophy of Photography

“Communication is an artificial, intentional, dialogic, collective act of freedom, aiming at creating codes that help us forget our inevitable death and the fundamental senselessness of our absorb existence.”
― Vilém Flusser

“Human beings forget they created the images in order to orientate themselves in the world. Since they are no longer able to decode them, their lives become a function of their own images: Imagination has turned into hallucination. This”
― Vilém Flusser, Towards a Philosophy of Photography

“Custom is a shroud that conceals everything. Not without first encountering the uncustomary will we be able to recognize what is customary and, more importantly, to change it. Such is the impulse behind our conversation with the vampryoteuthis”
― Vilém Flusser, Vampyroteuthis Infernalis: A Treatise, with a Report by the Institut Scientifique de Recherche Paranaturaliste, Vol. 23

“All incoming bits of information have, simultaneously, a tentacular, optic, and sexual dimension. Its world is not doubtful, but surprising; vampyroteuthic thinking is an unbroken stream of Aristotelian shock.”
― Vilém Flusser, Vampyroteuthis Infernalis: A Treatise, with a Report by the Institut Scientifique de Recherche Paranaturaliste, Vol. 23

“Texts do not signify the world, they signify the images they tear up. Hence, to decode texts, means to discover the images dignified by them”
― Vilém Flusser, Towards a Philosophy of Photography

“Human engagement for the storage of information in opposition to death cannot be measured with the same scales used by the natural scientist. Carbon-dating tests measure the natural time according to the information loss of specific radioactive atoms. However, the artificial time of human freedom (“historical time”) cannot be measured by simply turning carbon-dating formulas around, so that they now measure the accumulation of information.”
― Vilém Flusser, Writings

“For there is a general desire to be endlessly remembered and endlessly repeatable.”
― Vilém Flusser, Towards a Philosophy of Photography

“Human communication is an artistic technique whose intention it is to make us forget the brutal meaninglessness of a life condemned to death.”
― Vilém Flusser, Writings

“This apparently non-symbolic, objective character of technical images lead whoever looks at them to see them not as images but as windows”
― Vilém Flusser, Towards a Philosophy of Photography

“Traditional images signify phenomena whereas technical (produced by an apparatus) images signify concepts.”
― Vilém Flusser, Towards a Philosophy of Photography

“With this designation, the lifeworld falls into two areas: the area of the fixed, understood object and the area of the "one who understands," the human subject standing apart from objects, the area of objective conditions and that of the ex-istence of human beings. Action abstracts the subject from the lifeworld, brackets the subject out, and what remains is the three-dimensional universe of graspable objects, the problem to be solved. This universe of objects can now be transformed, informed by the subject. The result is culture.”
― Vilém Flusser, Into the Universe of Technical Images

“Olvidar es una función tan importante de la memoria como recordar.”
― Vilém Flusser

“This essay will discuss that hallucinatory power. First, however, imagination must be excluded from the discussion to avoid any confusion between traditional and technical images.”
― Vilém Flusser, Into the Universe of Technical Images

“Les images sont médiatrices entre l’homme et le monde.
(...) Censées être des cartes destinées à s’orienter, elles deviennent écrans ;
au lieu de représenter le monde, elles le rendent mécon-naissable, jusqu’à ce que l’homme finisse par vivre en fonction des images qu’il a lui-même créées.
Il cesse de déchiffrer les images, pour les projeter, non déchiffrées, dans le monde «du dehors». (...) Ainsi, en inventant l’écriture, c’est d’un pas de plus que l’homme s’est éloigné du monde. Les textes ne signifient pas le monde, mais les images qu’ils déchirent. Dès lors, déchiffrer des textes revient à découvrir les images qu’ils signifient. La visée des textes est d’expliquer les images ; celle des concepts est de rendre compré-hensibles les représentations. Par conséquent, les textes sont un métacode des images.”
― Vilém Flusser, Pour une philosophie de la photo

“Photo apparatuses are based on equations of mechanics, chemistry and optics. However, the carrier of historical consciousness is the linear code of the alphabet rather than the code of numbers. In the numeric code, an unhistorical, calculating, formal consciousness articulates itself. It is meaningless to say that one and one if four at around six o'clock. Consequently, photographs are post historical images, not only because they stand in the way of the stream of history like dams, but also because their generation depends on unhistorical, post historical, which is to say calculating, formal thought.”
― Vilém Flusser, Writings (Volume 6)

“Les images sont médiatrices entre l’homme et le monde. (…) Censées être des cartes destinées à s’orienter, elles deviennent écrans ; au lieu de représenter le monde, elles le rendent mécon-naissable, jusqu’à ce que l’homme finisse par vivre en fonction des images qu’il a lui-même créées. Il cesse de déchiffrer les images, pour les projeter, non déchiffrées, dans le monde « du dehors ». (…)
Ainsi, en inventant l’écriture, c’est d’un pas de plus que l’homme s’est éloigné du monde. Les textes ne signifient pas le monde, mais les images qu’ils déchirent. Dès lors, déchiffrer des textes revient à découvrir les images qu’ils signifient. La visée des textes est d’expliquer les images ; celle des concepts est de rendre compré-hensibles les représentations. Par conséquent, les textes sont un métacode des images.”
― Vilém Flusser, [(Towards a Philosophy of Photography )] [Author: Vilem Flusser] [Jan-2001]

“This, I think, shows what being free means. Not cutting off one’s ties with other but making networks out of these connections in cooperation with them.”
― Vilém Flusser, Towards a Philosophy of Photography

“Nossos pensamentos, sentimentos, desejos e ações estão sendo robotizados; 'vida' passa a significar aparelhos de alimentação e ser alimentados por eles. Em resumo: tudo está se tornando absurdo. Então, onde há espaço para a liberdade humana?”
― Vilém Flusser

“The modern distinction between science, politics (including technology) and art is both unfeasible and pernicious”
― Vilém Flusser